Adding Notes to Your Gmail with Notes for Gmail

Finally, here is a good news to all Gmail users who are desperately waiting for a way to attach notes to their emails in their Gmail mailbox. Notes for Gmail, though currently still in beta, is already a great well-done browser extension that lets you annotate your own emails right from the native Gmail interface in an easy and intuitive way.

It’s currently in private beta and is only available through request. However, I was able to request an invitation and got accepted immediately. Going through the process, it seems that the requesting of an invitation is more like a marketing strategy to collect our email addresses. But honestly, I don’t really care. As long as they deliver what I need they can have my email address. And I am happy giving them even 2 if they want.

At the moment, Chrome is the only browser that works with this extension. The Firefox version is on its way. Because it’s still in beta, it hasn’t made its way to Chrome App Store. Therefore, you will have to download the extension file and manually install it. The Notes for Gmail website has a very detail procedure how to install it. Basically, you need to go to Chrome Extension Settings page, and drag & drop the downloaded extension file into the browser and install it from there.

Once you have it installed, simply refresh the page to first go through the authorizing process before letting the fun begins.

The Add Note button shows up right in your Gmail interface. You can add notes to individual message, to a thread of message, or to your mailbox. And you can edit, delete, and share your note by hovering over it with your mouse and clicking on an appropriate icon.

A worth noting note to this wonderful extension tool that is going to make my life a lot easier though, since you are authorizing it to your Gmail account, you are giving them the rights to access your personal emails, contacts, and calendars. And the notes you are adding are all saved on Notes for Gmail server. If you are not comfortable about this, you should consider twice before enabling it.